The Great Encounter of China and the West, 1500-1800 (review)

The Great Encounter of China and the West, 1500-1800. By D. E. MUNGELLO. New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1999 . Pp. 144 . $22 .95 (cloth); $14 .95 (paper).

Small wonder that the admirable Jonathan Spence himself praises this book as an "admirable introduction to the great period of China's interactions with the West." Professor Mungello's work is a virtual parade of scholarly observations and analyses of an intricate series of ethereal intercultural exchanges between Ming and Manchu China, and Enlightenment Europe. He interprets these three centuries of give-and-take through the lenses of religion (heavily "Jesuitified"), and the arts (extending to literature and philosophy). His work is chock-full of widely revealing detail of the cultural, intellectual, and religious interplay that had, at times, as much effect on the contributor (Chinese literati's use of Christianity to remove Buddhist/Daoist ideas from [neo-]Confucianism), as the recipient (European Enlightenment thinkers' use of Confucianism to replace Christianity with natural religion-Deism). Mungello concentrates on Chinese and European acceptance and rejection, diversely, of culture, Christianity, and Confucianism.

This book aims to "present information and ideas [of early modern Sino-Western history] in the clearest most meaningful manner" to "the history student and the general reader" (p. xv). Indeed, the approach and length of this work (98 pages of text), does put the reader in mind of Spence's The Death of Woman Wang (139 pages), and The Question of Hu (134 pages of text), and highly qualifies this book for inclusion in a history course curriculum. The student (or the "general reader") will learn as much about Enlightenment Europe as about China of the Ming and Qing dynasties. Learn about Clavis Sinica (the key to Chinese language) which prompted Frederick the Great, elector of Prussia, initially to support Lutheran Pastor Andreas Mueller, in 1674 , to develop his typographia of 3 ,284 wooden blocks, each of which bears an engraved Chinese character, and all of which can be viewed today in the Berlin Staatsbibliothek (pp. 63 -64 ). See how the first genuine (Jesuit) history of China to appear in Europe (in 1658 ) forced a revision of the chronologies in the King James version of the Bible (p. 66 ). Discover the Chinese College (Collegio dei Cinesi), founded by Father Matteo Ripa in Naples in 1732 , which trained 108 Chinese priests until its demise in 1888 (p. 48 ).

Enlightenment Europeans admired Chinese culture, and cultural borrowings and assimilation were apparent in both directions, at least up to the end of the 1700 s. Moreover, Jesuits recognized that they had to approach the Chinese as intellectual equals and show through sophisticated argument that Christianity was in harmony with some of the most fundamental Chinese beliefs. Admittedly, the Jesuits posited their view of China in such a way as to win European support for their own programs. Others also intentionally skewed the images of China in order to favor their own agendas, and Dr. Mungello informs us of three groups throughout Europe, each with its own way of interpreting China. The missionary group, mainly Jesuits, studied and publicized China at the most serious and deepest level. The "proto-Sinologists" with a less focused interest in China, studied many different aspects of Chinese culture, and were also serious scholars. Andreas Mueller of Clavis Sinica fame was a proto-Sinologist. The famed German philosopher and mathematician Baron Leibniz is another good example of a proto-Sinologist. Mungello provides an absorbing account of the similarity between Leibniz's system of binary math and the system of hexagrams in the ancient Chinese Book of Changes (Yijing), (pp. 70 -72 ).

The third group of Europeans who focused on China were the "popularizers." Unlike the missionaries and the proto-Sinologists, says Mungello, the popularizers took a shallow approach to the study of China. They sought to find in China support for European political and intellectual movements. The Enlightenment Philosophes, for example...